Messages - qmmm

Here's the firms that have the most announced US M&A deals. Market share can be a bit deceptive since some deals are just bigger than others (Skadden includes the MS/Yahoo deal which has a volume of 42255).

and don't worry qmmm no one in this thread will judge you for speaking our language.

Thanks. Sometimes I feel like I'm talking a different language, but every once in a while one of those law and economics types like Posner will throw a random equation into a decision. Then I feel right at home.

Here's the thing about patent prosecution at large firms; the billing rates make it hard to have an entire career as a patent prosecutor. As you move up in pay scale, the price that the firm would have to bill for your services becomes more than most companies would be willing to pay for a patent which may or may not be valuable. So after a few years, your role will tend towards strategic technology portfolio management or you'll move into patent litigation (particularly, your experience drafting patents will be really valuable at a claim construction hearings or doing investigative work to invalidate someone else's patent).

Because of the price involved for a patent, a lot of prosecution is done at small patent prosecution boutiques. Those small IP only shops tend to be able to keep their overhead down and charge less for their services. And with the relatively flat business structure, the individual attorney tends to keep a greater percentage of their billed rate. Thus, those attorneys can still make a really nice living (although not partner money at a large firm) but also charge less to their client. So these attorneys can tend to be the ones who draft and prosecute patents for most of their career.

An alternative route is to go in house as a patent prosecutor, but very few people go in house right out of law school and only the largest tech firms have the resources to have dedicated patent prosecutors. For simpler patents, the drafting from start to finish may only take a couple of days. There's follow up with the PTO that'll need to be done, but unless the company files on average a patent a week there's just no need to have someone that only does prosecution.

If you get the PhD, firms will try to use you were you'd be most valuable. To a large firm, that'd be prosecution. But you wouldn't stay in prosecution. Thus there's an ever present need at these firms for PhDs and people with technical backgrounds. That's also why patent prosecutors can get 1st market salaries in 2d market cities w/ national law firms. (It's also strategic; placing prosecutors in secondary markets allows the firm to keep other overhead down thereby allowing them to exploit the prosecutor for longer even with paying them higher base salaries then the other associates in the office.) This demand is also the reason that PhDs don't need to have the same sort of JD pedigree (pedigree = a*school + b*grades [yes, I am a science nerd]), and the PhD will be able to at least get their resume looked at by most the recruiting coordinators at firms w/ a prosecution practice.

The PhD is largely irrelevant for anything besides prosecution. If you wanted to do IP litigation or transactional work, where you got your JD and what sort of grades you had will be much more important.

PS. If you really want to do prosecution, pass the patent bar before you start law school. It'll set you apart when you apply for summer jobs.

For the record, the Tech Law Journal's normal lunch is pizza. But the person normally responsible for food was also running for an exec. board position that same day. Coincidence? Perhaps.

Although, the normal Tues. & Thurs. joint Tech Law Journal and Center for Law and Technology talks typically has the best food going.

Also, about housing, be prepared to sign and start paying a lease at the beginning of the next month. I didn't look right around campus, so the apts typically housing students may be a bit different. But for those further out neighborhoods, apts usually don't go on the market until the tenant is about the move out so the landlords won't keep the unit empty all summer.

As for the placement at the top firms, the self selection in geography (see the location of the HQ of the V20 firms below) couldn't possibly have anything to do with the relative disparity in the percentages. Or perhaps it's because Boalt students are more interested in govt and public interest work.

Okay, I don't know if this is an overshare, or if we're not supposed to talk too much about exams or whatever, so maybe I'll delete, but can I just share how tricky my civ pro prof is?

We had a super-long hypo about a complicated due process issue.

That was actually also a 12(b)(6) question, to be analyzed under Conley and Twombly.

That was ACTUALLY also a Rule 56 question, because there were documents attached to the 12(b)(6) motion, meaning it should be treated as a motion for summary judgment, and analyzed according to Celotex/Adickes standards. But the documents were only given in camera, or some crap.